Ancestry Bolsters Product and Technology Leadership Team

New Executives Join from Amazon, American Express and Intuit to Lead DNA Product, Platform, and Business Operations

SAN FRANCISCO and LEHI, Utah, Sept. 07, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Continuing efforts to support its growth and product leadership, Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, today announced that it has added three senior leaders to its Product and Technology team:

David Sanchez, formerly the Head of Product for Alexa at Amazon Lab126, joins as Vice President, DNA Product, to lead the teams that have built AncestryDNA into the world’s largest consumer genomics platform, with more than five million people having taken its test in the last five years.

Niraj Nagrani, comes to Ancestry as Senior Vice President of Platform from American Express, to provide senior leadership to the Company’s ongoing efforts to both strengthen its web, mobile, cloud, and data technology platform as well as to complete its successful migration to the Amazon Web Services cloud.
Leila Pourhashemi, joins from Intuit, in the new role of Vice President of Business Operations, to spearhead efforts to drive operational performance across all areas of the Product and Technology organization including management of investments, program management, and measurement of execution against the company’s goals and targets.

“David, Niraj, and Leila are all recognized, experienced senior leaders who bring an unusual combination of vision and rigor, honed in some of the world’s most recognized tech organizations. The skills they bring to the table are the perfect complements to what our team already has to offer,” said Nat Natarajan, Executive Vice President of Product and Technology at Ancestry. “They’ve each repeatedly demonstrated the ability to see around the corner and understand what their teams need to do in order to continue to win in highly competitive markets. Our teams have done an incredible job in building Ancestry into the leader in two consumer markets – family history and consumer genomics – and the addition of these senior leaders will help to ensure we remain in that leadership position well into the future.”

Why They Joined Ancestry

David Sanchez, VP of DNA Product: “With every kit that is sold, AncestryDNA is building a technology platform for great consumer experiences. What’s most exciting is that Ancestry’s success to date is just the tip of the iceberg. I see it as an opportunity to work with a passionate and innovative team to develop products that will have a meaningful impact on millions of people around the world in the coming years.”

Niraj Nagrani, SVP of Platform: “Ancestry’s business is built on the ability of multiple consumer applications, systems, and rich data assets to come together to deliver a seamless, personal, and emotional experience for the consumer and partners. The company’s success is testament to the value and benefits of the technology the team has built to date and I am excited to work with them to build the application, cloud, and data platform of the future. We are committed to growing data assets and accelerating the pace of innovation at Ancestry and in our industry as a whole, while ensuring we are delivering meaningful products and insights to our customers.”

Leila Pourhashemi, VP of Business Operations: “Millions of people around the world have had their lives changed by a discovery made using one of Ancestry’s products. Delivering that kind of meaningful experience is only possible thanks the work and vision of the teams who build those products. Our opportunity now is to ensure that we have the best possible systems and processes in place to enable our teams to continue to build and deliver incredible products for decades to come.”

Background

David joins from Amazon Lab126, where he was Head of Product for the Alexa platform. He is a seasoned innovator and product design leader with a strong history of bringing rich, customer-centric experiences to market. Prior to Amazon, he was VP of Product and Partnerships at Education Elements and Director of Strategic Marketing at Jawbone, in addition to senior roles at Tellme Networks (now Microsoft), and Accenture.

Prior to joining Ancestry, Niraj was Global Head of Platforms for Cloud, Data, Analytics, Frameworks, Products and Engineering at American Express. There, he was responsible for consumer, merchants, corporate Application, Cloud and Data Science Platform. Earlier, Niraj was VP of Engineering and Product at A16Z funded SnapLogic and General Manager of Microsoft Azure Cloud and O365 Engineering at Microsoft in addition to prior senior executive product and engineering leadership roles at Oracle, Interwoven, and Cap Gemini.

Leila was most recently Head of Business Operations and Program Management for the Information Security division of Intuit. She is a recognized leader in helping organizations reduce complexity and successfully navigate change in order to deliver measureable business improvements. Earlier in her career she was Head of Product Operations at eBay and Senior Director of Enterprise Transformation at PayPal, in addition to senior roles at LeapFrog, Nuance Communications, and Sun Microsystems.